When the Stars Run Out of Fuel
by midnight-blue
Summary: [ Samantha introspection ] Does a star really burn out, or does it just get tired of clinging to the sky?


**title:** when the stars run out of fuel  
**author: **kristin  
**rating:** innocent  
**summary: **Does a star really burn out, or does it just get tired of clinging to the sky? Samantha introspection  
**disclaimer: **If I owned this show, I would still be watching it  
**notes:** Takes place shortly after _Fallout_, because it was one of the most beautiful episodes of a show, ever

* * *

She doesn't know how to sleep without ice breathing against her skin. The hospital room had been the temperature of a mild winter day and she had occasionally been fearful of how like death it was; when she would brush a hand against the scar on her leg, her fingertips, void of warmth, cultivated the notion that perhaps she was fooling herself there. 

Here, too, as she glances at the winter quilt sitting on the floor of her closet. But she doesn't need it now.

She is melting.

The pillow which had been cushioned against her side now rests against her stomach as she hugs it closely to absorb the sweat.

A heavy, nearly horizontal rain pummels the window without curtains and it makes her think of the hospital room and disappearing. Life, for a few weeks, had been an austere room with beeps and lines that rose up and down and paraded into an end she couldn't see. Where did a heartbeat go, and if she desired just the silence, would it forget to come again?

Now she wishes for the beep, turning to touch her clock, then throwing the one sheet angrily off herself.

She sees her chest move, but it doesn't--

Warm fingers brush at her sternum, afraid, then rest there for a moment, feeling a beat.

Maybe this is how death _really_ comes -- warm fingers and breath you're painfully aware of, and the sound of rain, not heartbeats. Rain, she supposes, because if she were to die...tonight, any night, everything else keeps going.

It always does.

Disappearing --

because it is hard to find people when they drink rain.

It wasn't just the heat, but the dream -- every night, the dreams. She doesn't remember them. She hasn't told anyone, but she doesn't remember everything about the incident, either. She remembers being cold.

She can't be anything else.

She remembers Barry Mashburn's voice shaking and Jack's voice yelling. She remembers the smell of the new hardcover she had picked up before things got bad.

It had been hot, before --

the bullet.

Samantha sits up now, still holding the pillow, and watches the rain, thinking of degrees and how her life, in these moments, is now just about whether warmth or chill overtakes her.

_What does it mean when you want to be cold?_

Blood, too, which she felt, but doesn't remember seeing. Blood on Jack's shirt, hating benches and humidity, and goodbyes.

She stands now, still holding the pillow, but quickly throws it to the floor as she reaches for the crutches.

_If you're alone when you bleed, can you even qualify as a ghost?_

Danny stocked the fridge earlier for her, so she stands in front of it, reveling in the chill it graciously shares. But, fluid-wise, there is only water, and juice the color of liquid she's thinking she has too much of as it is right now.

You _can_ have too much blood, after all; it makes the endings slower and harder to forget.

She sits on the couch now, watching the rain through the other window with no curtains, and thinks it wouldn't matter to listen to television or the radio, because these are just lives around hers and she's aware tonight that if she could just cool down a little she might not die as slowly this time.

The ending with Jack had been the slowest and the one that hurt worst.

There were other endings, ones she'd created, that only reminded her of her fragile tether to any sort of depth in life.

The bookstore ending had been slow, too, and hadn't really ended at all.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

_Does a star really burn out, or does it just get tired of clinging to the sky?_

She thinks of the night sky and the stars and how they must resent being blocked by the rain. Standing up, she grabs her crutches and leans heavily on them as she pulls at her t-shirt, needing the sweat to go away. Her boxer shorts expose the scar.

She doesn't know how to be warm anymore, and doesn't want to be.

Pulling open the door, she hobbles out carefully, lowering herself to the top step of her stoop and laying her crutches beside her, leaning her head against the black rail and shutting her eyes so the rain won't drown her yet.

Maybe love is about blood.

And when you wear your lover's blood on your shirt, you let them go, because they could easily give themselves to the earth. And the only love worth relying on is the one that's warm and contained inside blue veins acquainted with the heart.

She thinks this must be why Jack visited her only once, when she was asleep, and squeezed her hand before leaving.

Her only lover, now, is the rain. Infrequent and unreliable.

But it saves her from the warmth.

And love, now, is about stars that weary of earth.

And summers of our heart, which should never come.

_**end**_


End file.
